Hope or Despair?

@ Wolf Kanno: FF XIII and FF Versus XIII, and even Agito XIII DO NOT share the same world, and it has already been confirmed. They only share the same mythology of Crystals, but they do not share the exact same story, gameplay, characters, or even atmosphere.

Also, Nomura isn't going to be the director of XIII, he's the director of Versus XIII. Toriyama is the director for XIII. Also, I agree with Duality, these three XIII titles are probably going to be so different from each other that they could easily be called XIII, IV, and XV.

Anyhow, the differences are already obvious. XIII's Crystals has the power to create, and they're like Gods, only different... Lightning was even chosen to destroy the world by one of the 'Crystals'. Meanwhile Versus XIII's Crystals are simply objects that hold power, much like the traditional FF Crystals... and only one Crystal is left in the world of Versus XIII... so yeah, it is so different.. I'm not so sure about Agito though.

So I disagree that Square is getting ahead of themselves because these 3 games appear to be going in very different directions.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

Nobuo is doing the ending track for the game it appears, just like in FFXII. I believe the gentlemen who helped composed half of FFX's soundtrack as well as all of FFX-2's soundtrack is doing most of the music again for FFXIII.

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Oh dear god save us.

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Originally Posted by Jhei

@ Wolf Kanno: FF XIII and FF Versus XIII, and even Agito XIII DO NOT share the same world, and it has already been confirmed. They only share the same mythology of Crystals, but they do not share the exact same story, gameplay, characters, or even atmosphere.

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I stand corrected :laughing:

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Also, Nomura isn't going to be the director of XIII, he's the director of Versus XIII. Toriyama is the director for XIII. Also, I agree with Duality, these three XIII titles are probably going to be so different from each other that they could easily be called XIII, IV, and XV.

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I never said he was directing XIII:p But I believe he's writing it's storyline. That's why I mention I don't care for his writing style cause it's associated with some major disappointments for me (FFVII, KHII, and FFVII:AC)

Nomura has never written any of the plots for the FF series. He has been the prime character designer since FFVII and directed the Kingdom Hearts series, FFAC and FF vXIII but has never been given a writing credit for any of them. Yoshinori Kitase/Kazushige Nojima are the men you're looking for. As per usual, Nomura is just the character designer for FFXIII.

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Originally Posted by Yuriev's ghost

Nomura has never written any of the plots for the FF series. He has been the prime character designer since FFVII and directed the Kingdom Hearts series, FFAC and FF vXIII but has never been given a writing credit for any of them. Yoshinori Kitase/Kazushige Nojima are the men you're looking for. As per usual, Nomura is just the character designer for FFXIII.

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Check again... FFVII's screenplay was adapted by an original story by Tetsuyo Nomura and Hironobu Sakaguchi. I'll have to check again with KH but I believe it's a similiar circumstance.

EDITGA! I checked with the KH games. He created the original concept for KH series. But he is credited with being a scenario writer in KH2

Also I checked again and saw that I was wrong about the composer. Sorry for that, He helped compose FFX's soundtrack as well as Dirge of Cerberus.

I'm not sure how much of Nomura/Sakaguchi's original scenario made it into the final game, but I was always given the impression it was changed substantially at some points (the original script didn't involve the death of Aerith and didn't include the character Tifa, for example). Of course, I've never read the original script so I can't really comment further.

I don't think anything like that exists for KH, at any rate.

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Originally Posted by Yuriev's ghost

I'm not sure how much of Nomura/Sakaguchi's original scenario made it into the final game, but I was always given the impression it was changed substantially at some points (the original script didn't involve the death of Aerith and didn't include the character Tifa, for example). Of course, I've never read the original script so I can't really comment further.

I don't think anything like that exists for KH, at any rate.

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Arieth's death was in the script. I remember Nomura mentioning it in an article in EGM around the time Advent Children was coming out. Only Cloud, Aerith, and Barret existed in the original script and he goes onto talk about how they were debating who to kill. It was a rather amusing story actually...

Source (check the 'Let’s just kill Aeris…' section). Not that I'm refuting that there were only three protagonists in the beginning though, I've heard that as well.

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Originally Posted by Yuriev's ghost

Source (check the 'Let’s just kill Aeris…' section). Not that I'm refuting that there were only three protagonists in the beginning though, I've heard that as well.

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I can't get access to the site:cry:

My source comes from EGM issue 196 October 2005. It's on page 104 in a section called Afterthoughts: Final Fantasy VII. It features an interview with Director Yoshinori Kitase (director) and Tetsuya Nomura(character designer/battle director/ and co-author) and I quote:

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EGM: We heard that the death of Aerith and the creation of Tifa both originated in a phone call between you two...

Tetsuya Nomura: It's funny, some magazine ran that story, but only the beginning and the ending of it. People think that I wanted to kill off Aerith and replace her with Tifa as the main character! [Laughs] The actual conversation between Mr. Kitase and myself was very, very long. Originally, there were only going to be three characters in the entire game: Cloud, Barrett, and Aerith. Can you imagine that? And we knew even in the early concept stage that one character would have to die. But we only had three to choose from. I mean Cloud's the main character, so you can't really kill him. And Barrett... well, that's maybe too obvious. But we had to pick between Aerith and Barrett. We debated this for a long time, but in the end decided to sacrifice Aerith.[/B]

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The next question asked, is if they chose her to increase the drama and Nomura says yes. He mentions it being a tradition in the FFseries to kill off a character for dramatic effect but in the past it was always tough and gruff "last man standing" guys like Barrett. He chose Aerith cause he felt it would catch everyone off guard.

I'm not sure if it's enough to satisfy, but it looks like they had extra stuff on the 1UP.com website... so if they keep anything that old it should be there.;)

VII is the only story that Nomura has ever once been credited on in the Final Fantasy series, but people act like he wrote VII, VIII, X, and X-2 all by himself. I have said this before, but Kitase, Nojima, and concering X and X-2 Toriyama, were the main forces behind those titles and they are responsible for them. Kitase even directed everybody's favorite VI, so what's the big deal here.

To blame those games on Nomura is like saying you didn't like Final Fantasy XII and it's all Akihiko Yoshida's fault. It wouldn't make any sense. Even the first Kingdom Hearts had Nojima, Daisuke Watanabe (who worked on Final Fantasy XII's scenario too), and Jun Akiyama as scenario writers. That's a lotta folks. Nojima also wrote the base for Advent Children. Still, as Nomura was the actual director for both KH games and AC, I can't imagine he wasn't very involved with the plots as far as what goes and stays and changes, and especially KH2 where he is credited as part of the writing staff.

I will never quite understand why people hate Nomura so much for things he didn't even do. Even as a character designer, he gets too much crap. There are more famous artists out there like Akira Toriyama or the group CLAMP that have characters looking much more alike each other than his, but he gets so much heat. If he had made XII's characters, I would have never heard the freakin' end of it. Thank god it was Yoshida who made characters that look exactly like his so that I didn't have to wade through thread after thread of bitching.

And I'm looking forward to both very much, as I have yet to find a Final Fantasy game that I have not enjoyed. Every company whores out their flagship, and I don't really blame them for it. Most of the time, it just isn't announced. Silent Hill had 3 and 4 and a Play Novel for handhelds all going on at once, it just wasn't announced all at once, ya know. It's the same thing here. Christ, the word "Mario" is on 4,000 smurfing games a year.

As a director, he would have the power to change the story as much as he see's fit for any number of reasons. It's why most creative types clamor for the Directing chair rather than be the screen play writer. Though technically the producers have the most power within a production...

The only designs the man has ever done that I liked was FFVII's but that's cause I liked the heavy anime look. But I don't really hate him as an artist, though I'm indifferent to his style. I know fully well he didn't write VIII, X, or X-2. I was disappointed with his work in FFVII:AC and KH2 specifically. His directing style seems to always be about showing off unrealistic combat scenes which over shadow the writing. Not that the writing in KH2 was good or anything:rolleyes2. It's just so... "bad" Hollywood... More style than substance. It's the impression I got when I saw FFXIII and it's spawn. That's why I have doubts cause I didn't feel like I saw anything but pretty graphics, future societies, and bad Hong Kong action film shenanigans. The plot is intriguing but with Tesuya's new team (the one that worked on FFX and FFX-2, of which I dont like either) I have little to hope for in the story based on their track record.

Now, chances are I am worring for nothing. The game will actually be really good and fun to play. Chances are, my gut instinct is right and it's going to be pretty bad (for me at least). But that's the chance you take when trying anything new. I'm really trying to be open minded with this game but I already dislike what I've seen of the world design and I still feel the Transformer Summons are a stupid idea that can never be taken seriously. It's like the game is trying too hard to be "cool" and "hip" and heaven forbid "extreme"...

As for Nomura...

The fact is, now that Sakaguchi is gone Nomura has sorta've been thrust into his position so I think 80% of the time they credit him for it even if he had little to do with it. I mean Sakaguchi worked on both FFVII and FFVIII and the haters of both games will generally mention Nomura (heaven forbid that Sakaguchi is not infallible when it comes to game design...) even though he worked somewhat intimately in VII he did have little to do with VIII outside of world design... so fans will generally blame the "new" element in the equation when it turns out bad.

I may have been a tad out of line when I said Nomura hates fantasy but I allude that to his modern design style for his characters. He seems to like modern and sci-fi elements more than anything. The closest he ever gets to fantasy is his non-human characters anf to some degree FFX, though I feel FFX's designs are modern updates of more "traditional" clothing...

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I can't get access to the site

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No idea why access has suddenly been blocked to that site. Try this link for a HTML version of the PDF.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

They all share the same world and mythology.

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No, they dont. They share the same mythology, nothing else.

Once again all people can do is whine and be pessimistic when hardly ANYTHING has been shown about the game.

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Originally Posted by Croyles

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

They all share the same world and mythology.

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No, they dont. They share the same mythology, nothing else.

Once again all people can do is whine and be pessimistic when hardly ANYTHING has been shown about the game.

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Someone already pointed that out to me and I acknowledged that I was wrong. Please read all the posts;)

I'm just concerened. I love my series and it's been going in a bad direction for awhile. I see FFXIII (well what little and insignificant info they've given about it) to be the epitome of this direction. I'm really going to try to be open minded about it, but believing that it's going to be automatically good and wonderful just means you're a tool. I don't have any rose-tinted sun glasses. I lost them years ago when I kept having my expectations betrayed. You need to have someone go against the hype and be somewhat realistic about this. Am I whiny? Maybe... Am I pessimistic? No, I'm more of a Nihilist actually:D

Oh, and Yuriev. I'm reading the document now. Thanks for the link.

That trailer looks like crap. Maybe Versus XIII will be cool but square is shooting 0 for ten trizabizillion when it comes to action oriented games.